I know, it’s a very long title, but it’s the best I can do after 2 days of networking, 2 days of walking around NYC, and all of this while consuming inordinate quantities of Tylenol/Emergen-C/funky Chinese herbs the guy at Whole Foods promised would cure all my ills.

I spent Thursday and Friday at the Blogher Business Conference. I am glad I went — although it was a big investment of both time and money for a small (but mighty!) company like Work It, Mom!. The best thing about business conferences is the opportunity to meet new people and connect in person with people I know only virtually. I think email and phone can go a long way to create great working relationships, but there’s nothing like being able to talk face-to-face and conferences offer a way to do a bunch of these mini-meetings at once.

I must say one of the highlights was meeting our awesome Mir in person, after working with her for almost a year. (Yes, she is as smart, witty, and funny as she appears through her different blogs. And if you need a laugh — or a lesson in how to NOT network — read her hilarious account of a very strange guy trying to pick me up at the post-conference party.)

The other highlight of the conference was numerous women coming up to me and saying how much they loved WIM. I mean, c’mon, did they know that I really really wanted to hear that and that it made my day?

I made some new contacts, met some great bloggers I’ve only had a chance to read, and got a few ideas for what we can do here at WIM to keep growing and engaging our community. But conferences suck the life out of me, probably because I expand a ton of energy networking, talking, consuming information, and trying to get some work done at the same time. (Being at an actual conference made me realize that I need to expand my list of networking how-tos with some ideas about actually networking with people you’ve never met at an event like this. On my list, so stay tuned for that.) I ended up getting very little sleep both because I unluckily got deathly ill and because I had no option but to get work done after-after-hours (oh, how I was dreaming of having a nice big team to get it all done for me!). It was hardly enough and now I face a really long list of to-dos (many of which are overdue) as well as things to get done at home, like making dinner, cleaning up, and getting my daughter’s stuff ready for school. A post-conference Sunday night is even worse than my regular too-hectic Sunday night, I’m now realizing.

Do you have any tips to avoid the post-conference or post-business trip chaos? Do you enjoy going to networking events or conferences? Have you cut down on these types of events since you’ve had kids because it’s too tough to juggle? Sound off in the comments!